Graduate Studies Newshttps://tringradstudies.wordpress.com
News, Events, Information for Graduate Studies at Trinity CollegeThu, 14 Dec 2017 02:22:36 +0000enhourly1http://wordpress.com/https://s2.wp.com/i/buttonw-com.pngGraduate Studies Newshttps://tringradstudies.wordpress.com
“Graduate Studies News” at Trinity College Has Moved!https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/graduate-studies-news-at-trinity-college-has-moved/
https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/04/25/graduate-studies-news-at-trinity-college-has-moved/#respondWed, 25 Apr 2012 21:00:45 +0000http://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/?p=310]]>Graduate Studies News at Trinity College has moved permanently to the Trinity College server. It can now be found at http://commons.trincoll.edu/graduatestudies/.

No new articles or announcements will be posted here. If you have subscribed to this site via RSS or email, you will need to visit the new site and subscribe once again. We’re sorry for any inconvenience, but this move is intended to improve service to all visitors.

Thank you for your patronage and interest, and we hope you will continue to follow us at the new site.

Tuition for 2012-13 for 1 credit (= one course) is $2,180 (not including registration or other fees).

For more information about all of the above, click on the embedded hyperlinks. Questions about registration can be addressed to the Office of Graduate Studies (860-297-2151) or the Registrar’s Office (860-297-2117).

Prof. Mel McCombie, Visiting Associate Professor of American Studies, has spent the past academic year on a Fulbright Fellowship in Cairo, Egypt. She has maintained a record of her adventures, including scuba diving(!), in her blog, Mel McCombie’s Fulbright in Egypt.

Recently, Prof. Paul Lauter, Allan K. Smith and Gwendolyn Miles Smith Professor of English and Program Director of the graduate program in American Studies at Trinity, visited Prof. McCombie and her husband. In her most recent post, Mel tells the story of that visit and includes stunning photos of their trip down the Nile to visit the Bent and Red Pyramids, the Great Pyramid at Cheops, and the Sphinx.

Prof. McCombie will return to Trinity during the fall term, 2012. In the meantime, check out her entire blog. The photos alone are worth it!

The Trinity Reporter, the alumni/ae magazine for Trinity College, has just published a feature article by Mary Howard on Graduate Studies at Trinity. Check out the online version of “A Master’s Degree” here.

Toward the end of most undergraduate and some graduate courses, students complete evaluations of the course just taken. While the cycle grinds on, the controversy over these evaluations grinds on as a sort of undertone to the academic process. Some students take course evaluations seriously; others don’t. Some faculty find course evaluations helpful; others hate them. In general, the controversy over student course evaluations swirls around several issues:

Do student course evaluations provide a reliable basis for drawing conclusions about the quality of teaching? For example, several studies have shown that there is a strong correlation between students’ expectation of their grade in a given course and the positive/negative level of evaluation that they give for that course—what some call “reciprocal grading”: “You give me a good grade, and I’ll give you a positive evaluation.”

Are students good judges of their own learning or of teaching? Consider that less academically adept students, who often are unaware of what they don’t know, frequently overestimate their academic performance, while better students, who have a clearer glimpse of what they don’t know, often underestimate their achievement. And how many students are able to reliably estimate whether their instructor is “knowledgeable” or “well prepared” in his/her field? Do student evaluations ultimately boil down to whether students “like” their professors?

Given that most colleges value academic rigor, but that students tend to associate rigor with negative instructor characteristics and that such negativity is reflected in evaluations, how should the data from student evaluations be utilized? Should the results be used in a major way, or at all, by a college to evaluate teaching? If the answer is no, how should ineffective or incompetent instructors be identified and weeded out?

Currently at Trinity College, results of student evaluations of graduate courses are provided only to the instructor and are not shared with administrators. In light of the many questions that surround such evaluations nationally, is that practice appropriate, or not? Whether you are a student or a faculty member, now is your chance to express your opinion!

To enhance your knowledge about student course evaluations, take a look at one or more of the following:

]]>https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/03/02/student-course-evaluations-are-they-worth-it/feed/1barnettwriterevaluationWhat About an Online Portfolio?https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/what-about-an-online-portfolio/
https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/what-about-an-online-portfolio/#respondTue, 21 Feb 2012 21:04:55 +0000http://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/?p=252]]>As a graduate student, you are investing a great deal of time and effort, not to mention financial resources, in earning a master’s degree. But have you thought about how you will showcase what you have achieved? Most people who pursue graduate study have definite personal goals: personal enrichment, career enhancement, promotion, etc. Finding a way to let others know what you have done should not be neglected.

Some are beginning to construct e-portfolios of their work and experience and post them online. Often, they create their own website to display their portfolio. Many have found such an approach useful as a way to enhance employment applications or to become noticed for promotion. Such an approach can also bring the satisfaction of networking with others who share their interests.

If you would like to explore creating an online portfolio, take a look at an article by David Brooks, “Should Graduate Students Create E-Portfolios?” One of the comments to this article points to a company, Interfolio, that hosts graduate student portfolios and provides tools for creating and managing them.

What do you think? Is this for you?

]]>https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/02/21/what-about-an-online-portfolio/feed/0barnettwriterDigital Tools for Research Managementhttps://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/digital-tools-for-research-management/
https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/digital-tools-for-research-management/#respondMon, 30 Jan 2012 19:01:35 +0000http://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/?p=239]]>With the vast array of digital sources of scholarly information—online databases, digital journals, electronic library sources, online articles, blog posts, etc.—you can easily lose track of what you have collected. And finding specific pieces of information and then being able to cite the source properly can add many non-productive hours to your research and writing. What to do?

There are now a couple of fairly good digital tools to help you organize and locate information, and they assist you with citation of sources. Mendeley is a free research management tool that allows you to organize materials, generate proper citations in Word and other applications, save/backup your papers and sources, share sources and papers, and collaborate with others. By creating a free account, you can download the application for Windows, Mac, or Linux platforms and store your material on their site in the cloud. That way, if your computer crashes or is stolen or lost, you won’t lose your research material.

Another tool, Zotero, is especially handy because it lives in your browser.

Zotero is the only research tool that automatically senses content, allowing you to add it to your personal library with a single click. Whether you’re searching for a preprint on arXiv.org, a journal article from JSTOR, a news story from the New York Times, or a book from your university library catalog, Zotero has you covered with support for thousands of sites.

Zotero collects all your research in a single, searchable interface. You can add PDFs, images, audio and video files, snapshots of web pages, and really anything else. Zotero automatically indexes the full-text content of your library, enabling you to find exactly what you’re looking for with just a few keystrokes.

Zotero also boasts mobile apps for when you’re on the go. Because of these conveniences, Zotero has become wildly popular. The following video explains Zotero’s many features; several additional features appear in updated versions.

Of course, when you use such a tool, you have fewer excuses for not keeping track and incorporating relevant information into your papers and exercises!

Have you already used such a tool? If so, which one? Which do you prefer? Do you know of others?

]]>https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/01/30/digital-tools-for-research-management/feed/0barnettwriterNew Grading Scale for Graduate Studieshttps://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/new-grading-scale-for-graduate-studies/
https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/new-grading-scale-for-graduate-studies/#respondThu, 19 Jan 2012 18:20:38 +0000http://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/?p=232]]>Effective Spring 2012, the Trinity College Graduate Studies grading scale officially changed. We made this change in order to bring our grading scale into closer conformity with the undergraduate grading scale and with grading scales typical of other graduate programs. In addition, it is necessary to conform to Federal reporting requirements for student aid and other purposes.

This change is effective going forward; it is not retroactive. This means that students enrolled in courses through the Fall Term 2011 and who complete additional courses after that date will have “mixed” transcripts. That is, their transcripts will continue to reflect the former grading scale for all courses completed through Fall 2011; courses completed thereafter will reflect the new grading scale. Since no numerical value was assigned under the former grading scale, no grade point average (GPA), cumulative or otherwise, can be generated for those courses Cumulative GPAs will be generated for the new grades only. An explanation of both grading scales and the change will appear on the key of all official transcripts.

Students who begin graduate study with the Spring Term 2012 will receive grades under the new grading scale only.

For a complete explanation of the new scale, please visit the Academic Regulations page on the Graduate Studies website.

Graduate school can be a challenging experience for anyone. Sometimes it is helpful to read about others’ experiences just to know that you’re not alone. Fellow students can also offer useful tips and tricks to surviving in academia. Just where can you find such information? Often in graduate students’ blogs!

BestOnlineMastersDegrees.com has compiled a list of their “50 Best Graduate Student Blogs.” The list is sorted by various disciplines: law, business, medicine, humanities and social sciences, and the arts. Whether the list is truly the “50 Best,” it might be a good place to start.

And, as always, Trinity College graduate students can post their own tips and tricks right here on Graduate Studies News. Just send a request to the Director of Graduate Studies.

]]>https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2012/01/11/graduate-student-blogs-source-for-useful-information/feed/0barnettwriterGraduate School BluesAnne Teschner (M.A. 2006) Accepts Award at White Househttps://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/anne-teschner-ma-2006-accepts-award-at-white-house/
https://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/2011/12/21/anne-teschner-ma-2006-accepts-award-at-white-house/#respondWed, 21 Dec 2011 20:07:43 +0000http://tringradstudies.wordpress.com/?p=166]]>Anne Teschner (M.A., American Studies atTrinity College) accepted a National Arts and Humanities Youth Program award at the White House on November 2, 2011. Anne accepted the award on behalf of the Care Center in Holyoke, MA, where she serves as Executive Director.

The Care Center was recognized for its extensive work in providing educational and support services for pregnant and parenting teens. Working with area colleges, the Center helps teenage mothers complete high school and move on to college. The Center was one of 12 winners out of 500 nominations for this year’s award.

“We have seen over the years that, when young people are provided with an academically rich and engaging environment that includes the arts and humanities and provided with the support they need to focus and study, they will flourish,” Ann remarked. “This award puts us more centrally in the nationally discussion about the power of quality education and the effective approach to poverty.”

Anne observed that her time at Trinity was useful to her work today. “I had a great experience as a graduate student at Trinity,” she added. “My work there has definitively informed my work at The Care Center.”